


Tell Me All You Never Said

by Analinea



Series: Be still, my whumper's heart [11]
Category: Charlie's Angels (2019)
Genre: Blindness, Day 15, Elena emotional whump, F/F, Getting Together, I just came up with the title like now, Open Ending, Sabina whump, Whumptober 2020, jane too but it's not her POV, science gone wrong, so it's light
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27030439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea
Summary: Whole stories hide behind simple facts. One sentence for a life lived, or a hurt felt.When Elena says, “I always loved science,” and leaves it at that, satisfactory for her audience, there’s so much it doesn’t speak of.
Relationships: Elena Houghlin/Jane Kano/Sabina Wilson
Series: Be still, my whumper's heart [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947337
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Tell Me All You Never Said

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I am so tired you guys lol I just finished writing this it's 9pm on the day of posting, I could've waited until tomorrow but I wanted to do be on schedule idk...so quality might be lower than the other fics, my brain is upside down and if I can barely think French I can barely write English xD
> 
> But I hope it's still good!  
> Enjoy <3

Whole stories hide behind simple facts. One sentence for a life lived, or a hurt felt. 

When Elena says, “I always loved science,” and leaves it at that, satisfactory for her audience, there’s so much it doesn’t speak of.

That she used to hide an old microscope under her bed and get it out at night. That she didn’t do that because experimenting was forbidden but because she was  _ ashamed _ . That one day, she got the best grade so kids called her names that stuck to her skin; she couldn’t do her homework properly for the rest of the year, after that. 

That she chose her specialisation with a spin of a wheel. 

All of that, she wouldn’t share to just anyone– but how amazing is it: a world within a word. A secret in plain sight. 

For the longest time, she wished someone special came along, so they could learn all of each other’s untolds. But no one did.

She could only watch childhood friends with a kind of envy she wouldn’t admit to.  _ They _ didn’t have to say a thing since they lived their stories together. 

She watched the intimacy between best friends made at any age, and wondered, why not me? 

Solitude never bothered her; after all, all the wonders Earth is ready to offer are waiting for discovery. She even creates some herself. 

But wrapping around that is the loneliness she didn’t choose. That hurts. She has a few colleagues, sure. She doesn’t really want to  _ bond _ with any of them outside of work.

“But see, honey,” her mother says, “you’re not making any effort!”

How can she say that for those people, she doesn’t want to? Without sounding demanding, capricious, bitchy? How can she say that she’ll only give pieces of herself to people bigger than the universe itself? 

She might be putting the bar too high. But she doesn’t care. She’ll wait.

Elena reserves her gentleness for three things: tech, Jane, and Sabina. Being cautious never hurts, be it in relationships or handling things that could blow up. 

It’s even more true of enemies. Well– of their tech, not of their feelings.

Every base they set up, temporary or half permanent, Elena clears up a corner for a makeshift lab with all the basics; for any important work, she has her own place, courtesy of Townsend.

Except this once.

The shiny metal box is shaped like a fan, and all the buttons on it are artfully arranged– only a deep study will tell if it’s more fashion than function. There’s two plugs, but no screen and obviously no user manual. 

Jane managed to snatch this one up before they had to run; if they can figure what it’s for, they’ll have an idea of what their adversary’s plans are. Jane is still working on digging every detail out of the files, sitting in the opposite corner of Elena’s set up.

Sabina is leaning her elbows on Elena’s work table, watching her work quietly in the darkening evening, though she can’t quite keep herself from twisting from side to side on the adjustable stool she’s sitting on. She’s lucky it doesn’t squeak, or Elena would have kicked her out by now.

Waiting as some diagnoses run themselves, Elena checks some earlier readings from outside their enemy’s building. Movement catches her attention from the corner of her eyes, and she glances up as Jane raises her arms above her head to stretch her back. Elena can’t quite look away.

“Be back in a sec’–” Jane gets up; Elena adverts her eyes “–need anything?”

Elena shakes her head silently, but Sabina hesitates for a whole ten seconds before shrugging and declining the offer anyway. Elena can feel Jane’s unamused stare before she exits the room. 

“That was quite the look you got on your face, there,” Sabina remarks. Elena forgets, sometimes, that Sabina does that  _ a lot _ more than she seems to. 

“Dunno what you mean,” she mutters back, not even pretending to be immersed in the readings that just popped up on her screen as she picks up the tech again. 

“Whatever,” Sabina sighs, falling silent again. 

She twists and turns on the stool.

Elena’s head shoots up with a groan. “Could you  _ stop _ ?” she snaps despite herself. Her frustration has little to do with Sabina herself, latest observation of the feelings for Jane she wears on her sleeve notwithstanding. 

Sabina does that jerk-of-the-head accompanied with wide eyes and a pout, the one that means  _ okay, you’re touchy _ but really wants to say,  _ I’m hurt _ .

Elena regrets instantly, but says nothing as Sabina chuckles, says, “Alright, I’m gonna go grab some food,” and gets up.

Just as she walks in front of the table, the box in Elena’s hands warms up. It doesn’t make a sound except when it clatters on the table after her fingers went numb and she dropped it. 

“Wha–?” she looks down, confused.

Then there’s a heavy thump. When she raises her head, Sabina isn’t there anymore.

Elena runs to round the table, screaming for Jane. Her heart leaps in her throat when, on the floor, she sees Sabina, but not the rise and fall of her chest. She falls on her knees, puts a still tingling hand on Sabina’s shoulder– and thanks all the gods to feel her breathing.

Jane hurries in, drops besides Elena. “What happened?” she asks, eye of the storm. Elena can’t answer. All she sees is the blood running out of Sabina’s ears.

“What happened?” Jane repeats, grounding Elena with a light touch to her back. 

There’s no space for words before Sabina shudders and groans. Her eyes, framed by a frown, blink open slowly.

This is when the worst lets itself known. Elena bends down, tensed, as if ready to look into a microscope, find what’s wrong, fix it. If only humans were as simple as machines. 

Sabina mutters something that might not make sense even if it wasn’t too low to catch. “Elena?” a tiny call, “Jane?” Her hand searches them; Jane’s meets it halfway and squeezes. Elena rubs at her shoulder, too rough in her anguish.

“We’re here,” softly, an apology.

“How are you feeling?” Jane doesn’t ask if it’s  _ bad _ but how much. 

“F’ne.” The pinch between Sabina’s brows doesn’t go away. “Wha’time is’t?”

Jane and Elena share their worry through a glance, but Elena still answers. “It’s seven, sweetheart.”

“‘s still dark, why’re you awake?” she answers, each word clearer than the last. 

“Sabina?” Elena can’t help the needle sharp anxiety from punching through her voice, “Sabina I need you to look at me right now.” She bends even lower; Jane’s hand grips her shirt, maybe to comfort, maybe to restrain. 

Sabina twists her neck to look up, blinking hard. “I can’t? There’s no light.”

Elena stalls. This is all her fault. Security protocols are ingrained in her as surely as her own name is and still, she has to have missed something. Hurried and careless. And Sabina pays the price.

She hangs there, half present and half looking through memory for her mistake.

Jane takes her place, pushing her gently to the side while talking to Sabina in a frequency so low that Elena’s ears can’t pick it up. She can only guess what the words are by the rush of adrenaline, the fight of flight: Sabina stiffens, eyes wide. Struggles up with her arms extended as she staggers to the side, chest heaving.

Jane catches her, looking down at Elena over her shoulder with a panic usually reserved for life or death situations. It might be because Elena is whining, she realizes. She’s lost all control. 

“Please!” Sabina’s cry drills through the buzzing filling Elena’s brain. Her breath itches in echo to Sabina’s. Tremors run from one of them to the other. 

“Elena!” Jane shouts, a force behind her voice that snaps something back in place; Elena freezes: she should be better at handling this, for Jane and Sabina’s sakes. No training ever prepared her for the responsibility of hurting one of the two people she loves most in the world, but she should shoulder it and do anything she can to fix it. She’ll break down later. 

Sabina struggles in Jane’s arms, not a single tear on her cheeks and that might be the worst thing. The learning to dam the hurt. 

Elena gets up, frames Sabina’s face between her hands and shushes her, runs a hand through her hair a little frantically but tenderly. She tilts her head to look into Sabina’s eyes: they’re blown wide. 

Then Sabina rips herself from both Jane and Elena’s holds, folds on herself. Jane catches her when she collapses, supports her when she throws up.

A part of science of knowing that you don’t know. Elena doesn’t know. Sabina might be dying. 

So cover be damned, they won’t lose her. “We have to call an ambulance.”

Waiting is biting nails and shaking legs. It’s Jane and Elena linking their arms together, head on the other’s shoulder, needing the touch.

It’s tears, as Elena admits to her fault: Sabina is hurt because of her. 

“It’s not, it’s not, it’s not,” Jane whispers over and over, not until Elena believes her because she won’t, maybe not ever but definitely not now; but until she can hear something else than the blame she’s laying on herself. 

Then, in the quiet, waiting is Jane saying, “You love her too, don’t you? You look at her like you do.”

Elena chuckles through the exhaustion and the agony. Sabina, watching Elena love Jane; Jane, watching Elena love Sabina. Perceptive but so damn oblivious. She could start crying again, part nerves and part fucking irony.

Then it hits her. “What do you mean, ‘love her too’?” She takes her head off Jane’s shoulder, twists around to better catalogue every expression on her face. Jane looks away. Bites her lip. 

The silence is suffocating. Elena is at loss as to what she’s supposed to do. “I do,” she admits, finally. “I do love her.” Is it time for bravery? Maybe, surrounded by death and injury, she can be cliché and take her chance for fear of losing it forever. “But I–” she chokes out, breathes, “I love  _ you _ , too.”

Jane stills for a brief moment. Delicately, as if scared to break the illusion, she turns hopeful eyes on Elena. She sniffs, rubs at her nose. “Uh, okay.”

“Okay?” Elena can’t help the offense seeping into her tone. People glance at her disapprovingly, but she pays them no mind. 

“I mean,” Jane smiles, “I mean, me too,” and laughs. Doesn’t stop. So much that she cries again, sobs, folds into Elena’s lap. 

Elena, gaping, doesn’t move at first. Then she starts laughing too, crying too, rubs a shaky hand up and down Jane’s back. They fall asleep like that.

It’s a doctor that wakes them up. “Victoria Garibaldi?” she asks, stepping close to them. Elena remembers that’s the alias they used for Sabina in time to acquiesce.

“–we’ll have to keep a close eye on her, but we’re hopeful she’ll make a full recovery–” That’s the bit Elena remembers. It might not be perfect, it might not even be good. But Sabina is alive. 

When they walk into her room, she’s alive. 

And whatever path lays ahead, Elena and Jane will be there. 

That’s the whole story. 

**Author's Note:**

> And then Sabina gets better and they're all gay for each other that's all thank you for listening to my TED talk
> 
> I'm on [the reason my fingers always write stumblr](https://kinsbournescream.tumblr.com)
> 
> Kudos and comments? :D


End file.
